B'Fahsee
by pandolfi
Summary: The Book of Faces, found by a linguistics professor in an Istanbul shop, is avoided by its owner. Perhaps, just perhaps, because someone dwells within. Manipulative!Yeesha and Stupid!Esher, Redeemed!Gehn.
1. Prelude

**--Prelude--**

_considered to be a prologue_

All things, great and small, come from the Maker.

All destinies are written by the Maker. The desertion of a wife by her husband, underhanded slave dealings, the death of infants, the wisdom of the sages, the rise and the fall of empires, the dispersion of their peoples and the coming of new followers.

The chosen people of the Maker fell hundreds of years ago into death because of alienation and hatred. Some survived, escaped into the countless leaves of the Tree of Possibilities. Most perished, suffocated by gas and plague.

A few tried to rebuild the empire. Their efforts are now gone, their memories preserved only in journals and books, until others came to bring new life to the caverns. Some are still there, and the cavern breathes again.

Such is the will of the Maker, a will that was planned from beginning of beginnings. His people dispersed, their ambitions blunted. Their books tainted, their lands dirtied, but still do a remnant remember the times of pomp in the plazas and Ages of D'ni, and perhaps they wish to restore the empire again.

_Boglo prehnihv rehgahn!_ Cries echo in a desolate age, wailings in the darkness, pleadings to the Maker.

The Maker hears.

* * *

The bell above the shop door jingled, as it did every time someone walked in. This particular shop was nothing special, just yet another rare books store in the narrow, winding streets of Old Istanbul. Stacks of musty, old books rose to the ceiling. Customers often wondered what would happen if they pulled a book out from the bottom of the stack. This invariably never happened, but it is in the nature of people to wonder such things.

A customer walked in, raising small puffs of dust with his footfalls. He raised a hand and pushed his long, dark hair out of his eyes. Meandering through the passages made by the piles of books, he took one at random from the top of a small pile and opened it to the middle.

The man was surprised. He had never before seen such writing, even though he was the head of the linguistics department at the Istanbul University, founded in 1453 after the catipulation of the city, then called Constantinople, to the Ottomans. He traced the strange script with the tip of his smallest finger, marveling at the obvious time and effort that went into each word. He turned the page and found what seemed to be many letters of that alphabet in one symbol, which flowed and undulated before his eyes before he tore them away.

He was curious, to say the least. To find a language that he did not understand was exciting. To find a language that he could not read was exciting. But to find a language that he had never seen before, never heard of before… that was astounding. The professor closed the book and look at the worn cover. It seemed to be made of some sort of leather, worn smooth with the touches of many hands. A faint golden symbol was emblazoned on the front. It looked to be a box with the English letter 'k' inside of it, but it was so old it had almost faded into the scarlet background of the leather.

The book was heavy, and he almost dropped it as he shifted it from one hand to the other. He looked around for a minute, to look for more of the same type, but when he could find none the linguist wound his way through the stacks and eventually found the old wooden desk that served as a counter. Seated at the desk was an old man, who turned to look at the professor as he approached.

"Salaam. Ah, the book of faces," croaked the ancient man, lifting a hand to gesture at the book. "Yes, I remember it… I will give it to you for 15 million lire. Yes?"

The professor dug in the pocket of his ratty, old, American pants before extracting a worn twenty million lire bill. He shoved it in the outstretched hand of the owner and took the book out of the shop quickly, not saying a word and not asking for change.

As the door closed behind him, the bell jingled. The wizened old man chuckled to himself. Yes, he remembered the book of faces well. He remembered how the picture seemed to move, how the old man stared out at him on the few occasions that the book was opened.

The bell jingled again and another customer came in. Clumsily, he knocked over the stack of books closest to the door. Sighing, the old man got up, feeling his bones creak, and hobbled over to clean up.

* * *

The third floor in the A wing of the Istanbul University was painted an institutional green. The hallways seemed to stretch on forever, covered with bulletin boards that were meant to be covered with cute little reminders and such but remained empty, despite the best efforts of the administration to post things every day.

The head of the linguists department walked into his office, which had a small, dingy window overlooking one of the many small courtyards in the university. He sat down in his creaking swivel chair and placed the book on his rickety desk. He pushed aside papers from decades ago and looked at the cover. In this better light, he could make out more of the strange script in gold letters (for that was what they were, he assumed) on the cover. They looked as if they had been perfectly drawn in with a brush. His eyes traced the letters and how they flowed from one to another. His trained eyes saw repeated letters just in the text on the front, and also letters with small dots by them, variations of letters without dots.

The professor stared at the script for a moment more, and then opened the book to the first page. On the left inside cover there was something that looked like a crest with a stylized beetle in the center, around which was more writing. His eye quickly passed over the crest, though, and it turned to the box on the right page. On the thick parchment of the page there seemed to be a perfectly clear window into a room. In the room sat a man, apparently sleeping.

The distinguished professor, who had attended a prestigious college in Europe and received awards for his leading work in translating the Bible and other great works into one of the many languages of Papua New Guinea, jerked back and fell out of his swivel chair onto the dirty maroon carpet that covered the floor, contrasting horribly with the green walls. He raised himself back onto the chair, which had lost its wooden back, and chanced a look at the window in the book again.

The man had moved.

It had been a long week, the professor knew that. Meetings with the dean over his salary, the weekly test, and attendance, which was supposedly mandatory but happed to be optional because it was too much of a strain on the professor to take roll. He had read of people having hallucinations, he had heard of them brought on by great stress coupled with the consumption of ten cups of black Turkish coffee. He had, however, never expected to experience one, and so he rubbed his eyes hard, hoping it was just a play of the light (not that there was much entering through the window blackened with soot).

He opened them again and gazed into the crystal clear picture. It could be compared to a live video feed. The professor was looking into a room, perhaps the size of his office. It had rough-hewn stone walls. A torch blazed beside a hole in the wall, which, with imagination, might pass for a window. Up against the wall, however, was the man. He was dressed in tattered robes that once might have been white. It was an old man, as ancient as the head of the board of trustees that ran the university. His face, a veritable mass of wrinkles, rested on its side on a slab of wood that looked to be serving as a bed.

The professor slowly closed the book, caressing the heavy parchment pages and cover. He turned away and fiddled with aboriginal statues from Papua New Guinea before attempting to grade tests. No, the Indo-European language family was not related to Venusian, and the stem ur definitely did not carry the connotations of sex. He tried to concentrate, to do anything but look at the book again. Maybe it was the work of the devil. Certainly not Allah… the professor abandoned his grading efforts and whirled around on his broken chair to face the book once more. He flipped the cover up, turned to a random page in the middle, and encountered more of the writing. Turned another page, and another, and another, and found only black script that flowed across the creamy page in waves of ink. He opened to the picture again and looked closely at it. He ran his finger along its edges, checking for signs of connection with the page.

There were none. It was as if the window was fused into the page. He drew his hand back sharply as the man turned in his sleep and then tentatively poked the window.

In retrospect, as he looked back from lying on a wooden board in a stone hut, it wasn't the smartest thing he could have done.

* * *

So- something new! I'll see what I can do with this- probably some take with Gehn returning to D'ni from his prison age. Reviews are always appreciated! 


	2. Largo

_Pre-text author's note_: There will be some spoken D'ni in this (and the following) chapters. Because Gehn knows some rudimentary English picked up from Anna in his early, pre-fanatic years, the majority of his conversations with English-speaking people will be in a stilted, but recognizable, form of English. It is not vital to the story for the reader to understand the few words in D'ni, but for one's convenience (and because I'm a D'ni language freak), you can reference them at the bottom of the page for the meaning and a complete grammatical breakdown.

Also, B'Fahsee is set after Path of the Shell. The DRC, however, is again alive and kicking, thanks to a large research donation by some rich person.

* * *

**--Largo--**

_considered to be chapter one_

The D'ni city was dark inside the earth. It had been dark since the fall of the great empire that had called the craggy walls and islands its home, a darkness that had been absolute for over 200 years. Until, that is, an intrepid group of explorers rediscovered the cavern and the books containing countless Ages. The cavern, though, was still quiet. Perhaps 700 explorers a week descended to a few restored neighborhoods, notably Bevin, and the island of Ae'gura. When they departed for the night for their feather beds on the surface, the city was silent.

Only a few lights burnt around the cavern. Bevin and other neighborhoods that dotted the cave's walls shone with a feeble light that didn't even reach to the surface of the murky orange water filled with dead bacteria. The island of K'veer, with the great mansion built around the rock's spiral, contained thousands of windows. A few windows were lit in the dead darkness, evidence of the work of the D'ni Restoration Council. The great library on Ae'gura, once filled with books but now plundered, emitted a faint yellow light from behind the large stained glass windows that depicted a marriage whose details are lost in time.

The cavern was quiet at night. Only the Maker looked upon it, and he wept.

* * *

It was a bright spring morning when the dean of the University of Istanbul poked his head out his window onto the Court of the Kings that opened onto the Street of the Goldsmiths for a breath of air. The courtyard was closed to pedestrian traffic now, and weeds and ivy had overrun much of it. He gazed about the tree lined plaza and looked lovingly down at the worn cobblestones that had borne the brunt of millions of footsteps. After watching a pair of birds attempt to make a nest in a nearby tree he was about to withdraw to the dingy world of his office when movement below caught his eye. He was about to yell out to the offending student that the courtyard was off limits but stopped when he noticed that it was not, in fact, a student. 

A hunched old man was slowly making his way, with the aid of what looked like the leg of a desk, to the gate that led to the street. He was clothed in ripped robes, similar to that which the dean had seen some orthodox Islamic sects wear. This man, however, was definitely not a Muslim. Even from three stories up he could hear the man's intelligible mumbling. Perhaps he was drunk? Before the dean could do anything, though, the man had hobbled out the gate and into Greater Istanbul, seemingly just another drunk that prowled the streets.

The dean turned back to his work and promptly forgot about the experience. After all, he had to deal with the grumblings of professors over their low pay and a brewing strike among the mathematics department. Nothing could be more important than that.

The old man made his way down the Street of the Goldsmiths and stopped by the door of a rare books store. Hidden beneath his robes he held an innocuous looking book bound in leather with gold lettering on the front. The man peered at the sign on the door and attempted to push it open. The few passersby on the street raised their eyebrows at such strange behavior, for the sign obviously said closed and, if that wasn't bad enough, there was a doorknob in plain sight. Slightly scandalized but enjoying it, the people continued with their activities, occasionally sneaking glances at the strange ancient. After a few minutes, though, they gave this activity up, for it was obvious to them that it was going nowhere. They turned back to their haggling and trading, oblivious to the fact that when their gazes had turned away from him the old man had forced the door and entered the shop.

The bell above the door jingled as the proprietor was just finishing his somewhat sparse lunch packed by his wife two days ago. Discarding the strange tasting ham, he hurried as well as his arthritis allowed to see why someone had entered when the sign had clearly stated that the shop was closed. As he entered the room his eyes met a strange sight: an old man standing among piles of toppled books. The stacks that had taken so long to accumulate had fallen, leaving the shop noticeably brighter now that the window was no longer blocked.

"Ah." The owner paused, not sure of what to say. "Perhaps you want a book?"

The venerable ancient stepped on countless books to arrive before the owner. "Yes." He pronounced in a scratchy voice it as if the monosyllabic word held a special meaning. "You have… more of this?" He held up the book that had been hidden under his robes.

"The book of faces… you are a friend of Professor Nottingham? He bought that yesterday."

"Pofresser?" The man seemed confused and he wrinkled his brow as he let of a string of what the owner could imagine to be curses in a flowing language. "No. I no know pofresser. You have more books?"

The owner frowned, his face turning into a mass of wrinkles. It was back in '88, yes, all those years ago when his arthritis hadn't been so bad. There was that shipment of books from a desert in the United States and he had picked the book of faces up from the top of it to display as a curiosity.

"Yes, I think we have some more of these. Let me go look." The owner stepped through the fallen books, attempting not to step on any. He entered the back room through the rotten velvet curtain and looked around as his eyes adjusted to the dark. The box was somewhere—oh, yes, back in the corner. He grabbed some books from the top and stumbled back to the customer who had sat down on a rickety chair.

"Here are the books, sir." He presented them to the old man, whose eyes had lit up at the sight of them. The owner laid the books on the counter to let the ancient peruse them.

"Eh!" The old man let out a hoarse cry of triumph. "Lehhoor tah! D'nee!"

The owner leaned over the old man's shoulder and for a moment recoiled at the smell. In a few seconds he had collected himself and was also staring at the book. Another picture book, but this picture showed a small circular room lined with some sort of rotating belt. Pillars supported the ceiling, and the one in the center held a light and some sort of machinery.

"5 million lire." A low price for the book, thought the owner, and a good one too.

The old man reached into his robes, and for a moment the owner thought that he would get the money as he should. Instead, though, the man pulled out something that looked like a worn watch and slipped it over his right hand so that it rested on his palm. He then picked up the book of faces and tucked it into the folds of his robes.

"Sir, the money?"

"Chehv shehm." The man whispered this last sentence and placed his hand on the picture of the small room. He started to shimmer—and then he was gone.

The owner blinked. He peered at the book that was lying open on the counter. He thought for a moment, then decisively closed the cover and threw the book into the constantly burning stove in the corner. "Maybe," he spoke aloud to an empty shop, "maybe I have been drinking too much."

* * *

Books slowly whirled around the Nexus; every book to every Age that had been linked to by the D'ni rotated around and around. The firemarble in the light still burnt as it had for the past 200 years and the imager control panel sat black and silent as it had until a group of explorers had stumbled upon the entrance to a great tunnel. The strong pillars supported the roof, not a crack to be found in them, for there was no earthquake to sully the beauty of the D'ni construction here. The Nexus design, inlaid in metal among the stones that comprised the floor, the stylized gear decorations on the wall. More than a million D'ni had used the Nexus before the Fall… but not one since. 

A shimmering in the air disrupted the serenity as an old man linked into the room. He slowly turned his head adorned with stray white hairs to take in his surroundings and then blinked heavily as though trying to hold back tears. He guided a gnarly finger to his KI to press a button. Reacquainted with the device, which now worked, he walked over to the Nexus machine. His footsteps sounded flat in the small space.

His hand was trembling. Partly from excitement, partly from anticipation. Partly, of course, from the joy of being free.

His hand entered the KI receiver, which glowed blue. The imager popped up, but the words were in English instead of D'ni. The old man cursed as he randomly picked a line of letters that would bring him a book. The Nexus whirled and a book was placed before him. The cover fell open and the man could see an imposing building built on a small outcropping of rock. Katha Island, the home of Faresh, that contained puzzles beyond comprehension.

The old man grumbled and pressed a raised button, closing the book. His fingers landed on another line of letters and the Nexus delivered the book. It opened automatically and showed a welcome sight: the Great Zero Courtyard. He peered down owlishly, if only because his eyes had degenerated, and traced the machine with his eyes. A tear (although, if asked, he would have denied it) made its way down his wrinkled face, tracing a path through the accumulated grime of many years. An affirmation came.

"Kehn Gehn."

His hand descended over the panel, and he shimmered away, his form melting into the air.

The book closed and slid back into the moving line of thick tomes, and the Nexus was quiet once again. It seemed, though, that perhaps a different air had entered it. That the cobblestones seemed cleaner, that the light shone brighter, that the room seemed a bit bigger. A D'ni, descended from the line of guildsmen, had returned to his home.

* * *

Gehn appeared with his hand stretched out in the air, white robes slightly moving in the almost nonexistent breeze coming from far away tunnels and fans. His pale eyes turned towards the Great Zero. Surprisingly, he found it smoothly moving, lightning crackling from the center to the edges. He brought up his KI screen in front of him and it showed the three numbers that corresponded to altitude, elevation, and torans. They were almost all close to zero, and he closed his KI with satisfaction and started to hobble down the steps that led to the inner part of the Great Zero where he could reconfigure the Nexus to display the D'ni language. 

After a few long and pain-ridden minutes Gehn arrived at the right side door to the Calibration Center. The KI symbol glowed blue and the door slid quietly open to admit him. He continued down the pinkish marble path for a few steps and then turned around to look at the Calibration Imager. On his previous trips to the Great Zero after the Fall he recalled it being very fuzzy and he had always wondered what it actually was. It now showed a picture of Tokotah Alley before the fall. Some sort of stylized shell, however, glowed in blue above it. The old man wrinkled his eyebrows, but, discerning that the Great Zero was functioning, he continued to the back leftmost of the machines that lined the pool in the inner sanctum.

Gehn inserted his KI hand into the receiver and realized he would have to bend down to look into the small screen. He silently cursed and slowly lowered his head, hearing what seemed to be all the bones in his back popping. When his face was on a level with the small imager he looked at the screen. He reset the Nexus to its original state by pressing a button and then withdrew his hand.

He walked back to the Nexus book at the opposite end of the Great Zero, thinking of its history that had been drilled into his head when he was young, but he figured that it would be a miracle if he remembered any of it. Slowly, though, as his feet padded on cold marble tiles, he recalled that it had been built around the founding of D'ni, that Ri'neref had designated its line as sacred and restricted buildings on it to temples.

He had reached the Nexus station before he realized it, and Gehn started as he bumped into it. In a considerably better mood he placed his hand on the panel and linked back to the Nexus, leaving the Great Zero behind him.

* * *

The small DRC office on the surface was located in the middle of the desert. It was, in a sense, a very convenient location for a base of operations, because the only entrance to D'ni was a few miles away by the volcano. It was also not a very convenient location, if only because it was in the middle of a desert and the temperature tended to rise very quickly. It was July, and the small generator-powered air conditioner was broken. The air was stifling, and all three of the employees currently there wished to be somewhere else. 

The door opened and banged shut, creating a rush of moving air that was eagerly welcomed. "Ikuro!" Marie Sutherland's voice rang out. A debonair looking man poked his head out of a cubicle. "Some explorer came by about fifteen minutes ago and said that Nexus was displaying all in D'ni. I went there myself and tried it and… well, it's all displaying in D'ni. I can't read a thing!" Her hair, after only a minute in the office, had plastered itself to her neck.

"Oh? Lemme go check the language pack in the main lattice system. I can get it from right here because my KI is connected to the system…" He wheeled out of the cubicle in his chair towards the irate woman and pressed the large purple button on his KI. Marie, interested, leaned over to look.

"Hmm… seems like… wait, what? It says that it was totally reset to the conditions we found it in during that second expedition in '93! All that work! Maybe I can get it back up and running… you'd better alert Watson. He's going to be pretty angry." Kodama leaned back and prodded the KI and the imager blinked off. "I'll be going to D'ni to send a message through the D'ni lattice about the Nexus malfunctioning. What are you waiting for? Go!"

"Sheesh, I'm going." Marie walked out to go phone Dr. Watson about the most recent failure. It was, she reflected, a miracle that they had gotten the grant. If not… well, she'd be back teaching Anthro at Southern Illinois.

"Marie? What's this I'm hearing about the Nexus?" Dr. Watson did not sound too happy, a departure from his normal geniality. "It's broken? We spent years fixing it up to work with English, and now it's just whisked away?" His voice shook. It was his great dream to restore D'ni and open it up to explorers, and Marie could understand his anxiety over the loss of the Nexus system.

"Don't worry. Kodama will get it working again. You know he's a genius." Behind her front of confidence, though, she was privately worried. But every problem, from the linking sickness to the blacking out, they had been able to fix. Surely this one would be the same, only bigger. Right?

"I hope so. I'm off to dinner with Elaine tonight, so if you need to reach me use my cell. Bye."

Marie clicked her phone shut and trudged back to Kodama. "You'd better get going, because if this isn't fixed Watson will come fly over to personally roast you on a pole over the cleft."

"Yeah, yeah. Make sure, would you, that I don't get barbequed?"

* * *

The Maker looked, and if one looked closely in the great celestial visage, one could see the corners of his mouth twitch.

* * *

_Lehhoor tah! D'nee!_ Here Gehn slips into D'ni because of his excitement (and because his grasp of English isn't that good). Translation: _I have found it! D'ni!_ Breakdown: _leh_- perfect tense prefix; _hoor_- first person singular present tense 'to find'; _tah_- tentatively means 'it' not confirmed.

_Chehv shehm_ Translation: _I thank you_. Breakdown: _chehv_: first person singular present tense 'to thank'; _shehm_: second person object pronoun.

_Kehn Gehn_ Translation: _I am Gehn_. Breakdown: _kehn_: first person singular present tense 'to be'

* * *

**A big thanks** to my first two reviewers: Miveen and possumgirl. 


	3. Morendo

_Pre-text author's note_: Perhaps the character introduced in this chapter will seem a bit odd. Her motives, though, are based in reality (and what I've gleaned from some little glances of Myst V- don't have the Mac demo because I don't have a Mac and I'm trying—not very successfully—to stay away from spoilers). This will most probably not be compatible with the new story line established in End of Ages, but it's _extremely_ fun to write her, so there you go.

Also, sorry a millionfold about taking so long to write this. I really wasn't in a writing inspiration mood and making myself write doesn't seem… well, right. But here it is, the inspired version. Enjoy!

* * *

**--Morendo--**

_considered to be chapter two_

_He convinced Father that it was I who had destroyed the Ages. He convinced Father that it was I who was greedy for wealth and plunder. And as Sirrus dealt the final blow, he tricked Father into believing that I was the murderer…_

---------------

The island of K'veer stood as a silent sentinel guarding the cavern from outsiders. Almost from the beginnings of D'ni, when settlers lived on the islands instead of in what would become the city proper, the peak of rock had been inhabited. Over the years, the island witnessed the fall of kings, the corruption of empire, the loss of faith. The mansion on it, nominally owned by the Rakeri line, reflected the changing attitudes of D'ni until the downfall of the people. The house grew more decadent, housing great balls and ceremonies. As the ages passed the house grew around the rock until the spire was blanketed under them, as if the rooms were icing on the great cake of rock. By the fall, then, most of the rooms were uninhabited, holding dusty books in prisons of rock, never touched and never thought of. At the Fall only the servants inhabited the great mansion for the Rakeri patriarch was dead and the son had betrayed.

It had been silent on the island for more than 200 years, a silence broken only now by the almost unnoticeable sound of the prow of a boat cutting through the water. The boat was guided into the circular docking area by a pair of trembling, age-spotted hands. A swish of robes and Gehn disembarked from the craft and stepped onto the marble pathway worn smooth with age. He headed off to the right, noting with a sharp eye that more of the great Book Room's decorations had fallen off and had crushed some of the rooms below. He frowned at the thought of even more devastation, for when he had lived on the island the mansion was already in an advanced state of disrepair.

His thoughts were cut short when he reached the great wooden doors strengthened with iron that marked the entrance into Rakeri's Palace. Gehn stretched out a wavering finger and simply touched the door; it opened silently inwards on its hinges as if it had been oiled just yesterday. He stepped over the great stone served as a doorstep and stepped into the musty dankness of faded opulence. He had been here before and could remember there being a small, almost invisible button on the right… he reached out hand and blindly pushed on the cold stone wall until he felt something move. A quiet rattling sound filled the air as the firemarbles in the lamps and chandeliers were prodded into action. A subdued light suffused the air as they gained in brightness and Gehn could see that nothing had been touched.

_Good_, he thought to himself. _Now, I turn left into the hallway and make a right at the statue of the frowning Maintainer_. His memory had served him well and by some miracle of the body it had not faded during his imprisonment. About to begin the arduous trek to get to the main part of the mansion, Gehn paused when he heard, or thought he heard, an eerie screech coming from the bowels of the house. Almost as if it had come from the chamber…

But of course it hadn't, and perhaps his ears were playing tricks on him. He was old, and things were bound to go wrong sometimes. Gehn limped on down the hallway, wishing he had his _lelam_ cane to help him along. As he was drawing close to the doors that led to the main house he stopped when he saw a dimly lit alcove to his right that contained five firemarbles lined up in a row. Gehn, realizing it to be an old shrine to Yahvo that were common in older houses, promptly flicked his finger against the firemarbles from the left to the right. According to legend the ritual lighting of the firemarbles was supposed to secure good fortune for the next five _gahrtahvotee_. It was only a tradition, but Gehn dutifully said the chant and then withdrew from the alcove, the slight breeze from his robes dousing the firemarbles.

He proceeded down the hallway, his slippered feet flapping on the stone. It was the only noise in the palace, the only feet that had ever disturbed the thick layer of dust and dirt on the floor since the building had been deserted. Thoughts flew through Gehn's mind as he plodded along down the hallway, leaning on the wall now and then to catch his breath. Small snapshots of life from a time lost forever. A tableau, with a young D'ni man in a crimson Guild cloak milling around giant wooden tables in a crowd, his features at once common and aristocratic. Another picture, with jumping redness lighting up the surrounding buildings, scared young boys standing on a rooftop looking out at the fire. And then a room deep within a house. A sealed room, holding a leather-bound linking book. A crest, secured with five pentagonal tacks.

Gehn shuddered and walked on. It was not good to dwell on the past, he tried to tell himself. Too many painful memories. Too many things done wrong. Too many of the things done wrong never righted.

_A book flew into a fire, tossed by an angry hand. A boy looked in disbelief. "You are a god, aren't you…?"_

He slammed his foot hard on the stone floor, pain shooting up his leg. It would not do to remember things. Not now. Perhaps later, in the suite or the Book Room. Not now.

So he continued walking. Eventually he came to another grand door, or at least what used to be one. There were burn marks on it, great burn marks that made it look as if giant claws had been drawn down the soft wood. He swallowed and stepped back out into the dim light of the cavern.

Down another walkway, this one circling the bottom level of the mansion, to a rough-hewn arch that was at least five stories tall. Gehn passed underneath and entered a large room. The tiles that were on the floor looked cleaner than when Gehn had passed through here last time; the dark red and the tan shone through as, he presumed, in the glorious days of Kerath. He took a few steps towards the middle of the room and surveyed it.

Lights in stone pedestals on the floor shone up into overhanging arches. Gehn had always assumed them to be ornamental but had never turned them on. The firemarbles beneath yellowish glass were now, however, shining brightly, and great pillars of light went up towards the high ceiling, making an intricate pattern. Swirling shapes and hints of D'ni lettering in pure light wove throughout the dark rock as if they had been inlayed.

His gaze turned to the left and to the right towards the two great windows. Decorative and slim stone pillars slightly obscured the view, but otherwise the windows were directly open onto the cavern. It was what was in front of the windows, however, that fascinated Gehn.

When he had lived in the mansion beforehand for many years he had often wondered about the inset stone circle in the floor surrounded by tusks. Drawing on ancient descriptions of the room found in the Great Library he had concluded that they were not original or even of D'ni origin: the book, which described the whole of the Rakeri mansion in great detail, mentioned not even once the strange circles on the entry floor. Now, however, there was a bubble above it, abstract colors and shapes moving randomly on its surface as if it could pop any second. Through it he could see… what? An picture of something, a sandy island with great cliffs and waving green grass? An _Age_?

Gehn stumped forwards to look closer, entranced. There was a strange stone pedestal in the middle of the picture, which he presumed was somehow imager-cast. It looked so real and yet, at the same time, patently fake, for it was transparent and the imposing stone wall could be seen behind it. He walked towards the right, making the beginnings of a circle around the bubble. It appeared to be an actual location that could be walked onto and at the same time just a stone circle set into the tiled floor.

Wary of such things, as he had good reason to be, Gehn walked around more and noted that there was no imperfection in the perfect picture. It was real and yet unreal… and so Gehn hurriedly completed his walk around it and headed towards the stairs that led up to the living areas of the mansion. It was not good to be too curious just as it was detrimental to remember the past. Both, he reflected in a sudden moment of exact lucidity, could get oneself into a terrible amount of trouble.

It never wound through Gehn's mind that both could also have the opposite effect.

---------------

A woman worked at a table. It was a small and delicate table, and at a glance it seemed to be perfectly fitted to the woman seated at it. Both were thin and somewhat gaudily dressed: the woman in ceremonial D'ni robe, the desk decorated with gold inlays that snaked up the legs and twisted into a complex pattern beneath the piece of parchment the woman was writing on.

She dipped her pen into the inkwell and put it to paper, slowly but surely making the picture. It was not, she reflected, that she was a good drawer. She would not have drawn if she had the choice; no, she would be writing an Age to escape to. For wasn't D'ni ended? There was no chance now, or if there was she felt that it was infinitesimal. Too small a strand could not support a great hanging firemarble lamp, and it was the same with the D'ni city.

But she drew on, illustrating her life. She had to make them see that she was redeemable, or conversely that they were redeemable. The woman wasn't sure which she agreed with: that she had made a mistake or that they had blundered. For there was always that possibility with things unknown. There was no way of telling what they were thinking, what they needed or wanted. Their needs and wants were only manifested through their actions, a horribly inconvenient way for them to live. She had once, in her youth when she thought she could master the world, attempted to learn their language and failed.

The woman sighed and blew on the picture, the edges of the parchment moving slightly from her breath as the ink dried.

She had made many mistakes in her youth. Attempted to see how much she could do. When she broke the rules of linking, oh, had she been ecstatic. Refuted her father's teachings: when he had said that something could not be done she had always gone and tried it.

_You know I'm only ten, Dad. I'm not old enough to make a whole world…_

Many mistakes. Flushed with power from her linking abilities she had gone back to D'ni, the real _D'ni_, not the empty shell that sat in the cavern and futilely waited for rebirth. No, the D'ni of the tales and legends. Great banquets, festivals. She had seen everything in her youth. Ri'neref coming to the Age and deciding that it was suitable for his soon-to-be refugees. The moment when Kerath stepped up in the Library Plaza and announced that he was resigning as king. Two trials and an attempted execution. And then two figures wheeling a cart down an abandoned street, mist curling around the dead stone like suffocating fingers. The men laughed. One grimly, one in a sick humor, but it was a laugh nonetheless as the hauled dead bodies and placed their pasty hands on linking windows leading to innocent worlds.

_See the really bright one? A long time ago when your great-grandmother Anna first mapped this desert with her father, she looked into the night sky and used that star to find her way home…_

She drew some more, sketching out an animal-like figure. Another dip into the inkwell and she filled it in, the heavily-applied ink soaking through to the desk, staining the intricate goldwork.

So the woman, in her youth, had grown tired of seeing the past, her dreams of the D'ni destroyed by a poignant reality. She had turned to the future then, to see what would be. For, she had thought, why shouldn't she use her power? It was hers.

The woman dipped the pen again and drew lines over the animal, bars that locked it in. Perhaps it was waiting for food, or imprisoned because it had presumed to be like its masters. But, the woman thought, it didn't matter. As long as they accepted the picture, it would be just one more small step to reconciliation. Reconciliation a long time in coming.

When she had linked to the future D'ni, she had been surprised. It was inhabited again, fully inhabited. The Guild Hall rebuilt, the Library Plaza taken up from the sea and made new again. The algae, emitting light in their twenty-five hour cycle. People milling around the Ferry Terminal in grand D'ni cloaks, waiting for the boats to come and take them out to the island mansions. The kingly seat _filled_ again. It was as the ancient D'ni had been, even as she had imagined it would have been before her dreams were twisted and shattered. Except for the language and the eyes. The people, for all that they were D'ni, spoke the surface language. And their eyes were not D'ni, not pale and not adapted to live in a giant cavern under the sand, not narrow and needing glasses. No, the eyes were wide and different, some drawn like the D'ni but not, some open, some as slits and some as plates.

_These are the powers of gods and I now have this power…_

She had left then and returned to the book that she had written, thinking there might have been a mistake. For even those with the powers of gods could make mistakes. She sat at this desk, the very desk she was drawing on now, and paged through the thick book, checking the phrases, finally deciding that it was correct and had been. So she had linked again, this time to an empty cavern, even more worn down and broken than the one in her time. Not cleaned, not inhabited. The algae were dead, the mansions empty and crumbling or in pieces on the lake bottom. The woman had left then, not wishing to see more.

_Time conquered, light to darkness, linking without Books…_

The present, she had decided. For nothing could be done in the past without changing the present, and the course of the future seemed to be decided by the present, each possibility on a different leaf of the Great Tree. So the woman had turned to the only remaining inhabitants in D'ni.

She paused, pen in the air, thinking of how to draw the figure. She then decided on a shape vaguely humanoid, standing in front of the cage, arms outstretched. He would be feeding the… animal…, then.

They had been yearning for D'ni contact for more than three hundred years. The Least, as they had been known. Invisible. For what D'ni in their right mind would wish to see them, ugly as they were? But the woman had sensed that they had power, great power, and she wished to learn. Not to further themselves, necessarily, although that could be an added benefit. But she became a willing pupil for the third time in her life. The first had been with her father: a good man, if somewhat confused about life. The second time had been with the… well, Teacher, for she had never called him anything else. He had helped her discover D'ni, what she really was, and his teachings had brought out the power in her. He had died, though, and then the girl was on her own until she became a young woman, who was taught by her third teachers.

Another decisive line and the D'ni holding food was finished. The woman was proud of her work: this time, she had managed to make his face both prideful and humiliated, satisfying both herself and those who she would be giving this to.

The strange forms, beast-people, had taught her nothing of consequence, or at least that was how it seemed to her now, except their deepest power, which she had coaxed out of them after years of planning. How they had been controlled by their masters. The greatest power, for even the most powerful by themselves are not as powerful as they can be. The maximum power requires the most powerful to dominate those which have power of their own, and then take that power.

She had learned that from her second teacher, the most willing of teachers to impart knowledge to her. Her father had been cautious; perhaps it was her misguided sons that had caused him to pour so much affection but also so much protection upon her. She had not even written her first Age until she had been twenty: so young for a D'ni and yet so old, it seemed, to a human. Her third teachers, however, gradually became her equals. Controlling them bit by bit; the challenge was the most compelling she had even taken. But they had bent and bowed to her, as to all who had the powers of the gods. Her grandfather had taken people with little power and had them bow to him; his strength was in the number of people with lesser power combined to make a body with great power. The woman, however, had taken as numerous as her grandfather, and those numerous held far greater power.

She had reveled then in her power; for the short time she had it she had felt invincible.

_It is I who command light…_

She inked a small tablet on the parchment. An animal always had to be holding it so that she could show her regret. Always the same, appeasing them little by little until that one day in the future…

And then it had fallen apart. They had fallen out of her control; a careless mistake that had cost her many years groveling at their feet for their assistance. When they would not respond to the tablet anymore she had returned calmly to her desk and started drawing. Picture after picture, attempting to make up for one mistake. The top of the power pyramid had fallen, and the lower ranks were again in disorder, needing control, or so she had thought.

But now her plan was going to begin. A foolproof plan, almost, at least; she had attempted it years before with a D'ni refugee who had rejected her offer of shared power. For he had feared the animals too much to work with them to eventually overcome them. The woman, however, had grown up in an environment free of them and prejudice towards them, and had long ago developed her own stance towards them: they were naturally lower and she naturally higher. Not by birth were they lower, nor by virtue of what they were. It was a hierarchy of power, and she was on top.

_The Grower is the one who leads, so you will follow me…_

This time, though, her plan would work. A relative of her father's old friend, knowledgeable about the D'ni, would be taught by the stupid animals much as they had taught her. He would then deliver the Tablet to her and she would then control them as she once had, for she only needed to strengthen the tenuous bond that still existed between them and her. Then she would either reward her helper with a meaningless gift or send them off to some Age where they would not be a problem and impede her plans. She knew that he would be headstrong and have his own volition, and she liked that in a person, or anything, for that matter.

It only made it more fun to take control of.

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_To discover the truth, our father embarked on one final journey. However, he never returned. I can only assume that he perished along the way, leaving me, an innocent victim, entrapped forever… You must find one more page and I will be forever free!_

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**Please Review**, despite the fact that I was negligent in my updating! 


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